On Sunday, 8 December 2013 at 05:37:09 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
Or maybe this is just another one of those cultural old age
indicators?
Has the term "refactoring" shifted to mean "variable renaming"
among the
younger coders these days? Genuine question. I'm baffled that
these two
things could even remotely be considered similar things.
Yes, renaming is not very representative of "refactoring", which
generally is intended to mean more complex reorganizations.
(That's why I asked Walter if he considered renaming something to
be refactoring, before arguing my point). Still, it seems
reasonable to me to include renaming as part of the refactoring
tools, conceptually and practically.
I chose the trivial task of renaming for the example because it
was something everybody does, is easily understandable and
adequate to the argument: a human and a generic editor
function/macro do not do it as quickly and safely as a
specialized refactoring tool which understands the language
(which will fix all static uses of the old name, and can point
out other places for review).
